(A)
by tinylittlerobots
Summary: He is trying to recover what he has lost.
1. (Self)

**(A)**

1\. _Self_

Time moves at a strange pace.

Each waking moment of time, something becomes altered, renewed by the slightest. No one is kept stagnant, much like time, evolving never stops. Nothing has changed – no everything has changed, and everything has not.

Confusing. Isn't it?

You can bring forth a past self to your new self.

…

Wearily, his eyes are opening.

Between the seconds where his eyes go from closed to open, there is a strong presence of unawareness within him. When they're open, awareness of himself creeps through his body, pounding at his vessels as though he is reawakened from what seemed to be a slumber that lasted for far too long.

 _Where am I?_

Darkness is everywhere.

He could feel his eyes darting around in their sockets, attempting to take in whatever could be around him. Nothing. Nothing can be seen.

 _Yet I am here._

The rush of blood to his brain, the quickening pulse in his chest, the sweat that begins to coat his neck, he suddenly remembers – he has a body.

His body is reacting to the panic that's going to make him lose any sense of sanity. But then he hears something.

Breathing, it's not his. The breathing is soft and wavering. There's someone beside him, lying down.

Him and that someone are on top of a bed. That's it. He was sleeping, and he is now awake in the middle of the night when it is close to the morning. This is normal, mundane. Harmless. The registration of this to his mind had been delayed.

Deeply sighing, he wonders, _who is this beside me?_ There's no disturbance in that thought, just vague curiosity.

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness that is surrounding him.

Lying before him is an outline of a body that is turned away. Unkempt hair is in a ponytail, exposing her long neck. Her shoulders are bare except for the loose straps that have fallen off and are now lingering on her arms.

He smiles a little bit.

Through pure instinct, he reaches out to her. His hand roams from her arm to the slim curve of her waist until it rests on her hip. Affection is swelling up inside of him. His mouth excitedly opens to say to her, "Good morning – "

But the name that should have come out is not there. No, but he knows her name. No, but he doesn't.

She's stirring in her sleep, slowly awakening, she turns towards him, eyes still shut.

His hand had shifted to her lower back.

Peering at him with one open eye, then with both, her eyes slowly take him in, swallowing his image. Initial shock strikes her widening eyes, erasing any fatigue she would have had.

For some reason, in the midst of her stare, he feels his heart breaking.

"Sorry," he whispers, finally hearing his own voice falter as his hand moves off her back.

"No, don't be!" She suddenly grabs his hand with both of hers, cupping his palm tightly.

 _Her hands are warm_ , he thinks to himself.

"Athrun," her tone is desperate and quavering.

 _Athrun…? That's right…my name._

"You're here," as she says this, her voice deteriorates. Tears are being withheld in her eyes.

Before she begins to cry, Athrun pulls his hand away and takes her inside of his arms, feeling her smaller frame fit into his.

Brushing her bangs to the side, he gently presses his lips against her forehead. Then as if a trigger had been pulled, he remembers.

"Yes, Cagalli…I am here."


	2. (re)birth

**A/N:** Thank you for the reviews, I liked reading the theories. Although I did not intend for this chapter to be longer than 500 words, things changed as I was writing. Enjoy!

* * *

 **(A)**

2.[re]birth

What makes up a person?

How many lives can a person live? How many times can they begin again?

If you were to split a single human being in half, that being would be two different people of the same person. Imagine ripping apart a leaf into multiple pieces. Each tiny piece in your hands is still considered a leaf.

It is just taking on a new form, much like your self.

…

Dawn attempts to sliver through the slim slits of the paneled windows. The orange of dawn is so faded that it has become elusive. Darkness has spread out, overshadowing the dawn's light, preventing it from reaching the two who are _not_ sound asleep in bed.

They are wide awake. Their eyes have never closed from the moment he had recognized her. Instead, her head remains tucked under his chin, and his arms have stayed wrapped around her body. As he listens to her soft breathing, she listens closely to his heartbeat. They are both alive, even though neither of them have ever really been dead.

By shifting away from him, she disrupts their stagnant forms. Loosening his hold on her, he lets her slowly slip out of his grasp and out their bed.

Soon, Athrun has nothing to hold onto.

Before she walks away, she looks to him. Her mouth is agape, as if to say something, but it closes.

For a long time, she stays there. He can hardly see her from the shrouding darkness, yet he could feel her eyes roam all over his face and the outline of his body as though searching for something recognizable.

But of course, she recognizes his very being. _He_ is the one who has lost his sense of self. The only sense of self he can attain is through his name and the presence of his mind in a body.

 _Who am I?_

"…You are Athrun," she says, her voice uneasy.

"I'm sorry." A distant feeling of shame takes over him. "I didn't realize I said that aloud…"

"It's okay."

 _Are you used to this, Cagalli?_ Athrun wants to ask this, yet he holds his tongue because he does not want to burden the only person that he can trust.

"…It's okay, Athrun. You will be okay, we will be okay."

Her calming reassurance makes him smile. "Are you a mind reader?"

Without expecting her to, she chuckles. The sound is kind to him.

"I'm not," Cagalli replies with a hint of amusement lingering in her voice. "But sometimes I know what you're thinking."

Athrun's hand crawls across the bed to take hold of hers. He grasps her fingers firmly. "Good."

Rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb, she says, "I'm going to get ready for the day. You can stay in bed for now if you'd like. Take your time."

"Alright Cagalli, please wait for me."

"You know I always do."

* * *

The pads of his fingers smooth across the contours of his brow and eyes, then they stroke down his nose and lips. Like a stranger voyaging an unknown land, he is attempting to get used to the feeling of his own facial landscape.

The very shape of his eyes is at a loss in his mind…and so are the rest of his features.

By clutching onto parts of his body, he could not tell how thin he is.

 _My appearance is part of who I am but I cannot recall anything about it._

The thought makes his chest tighten. A clear, reflection of himself is what he needs to remove this feeling.

But Athrun could not bring himself to look.

* * *

He hasn't dared to close his eyes. If he had, he would've been brought back to sleep. Could a nap erase the new memories he has just formed? The memories are small yet carry significance in them. How briefly would they last?

He does not want to think. With sleep, he would not have to think.

 _How am I here right now?_ He spreads his arms out to the empty bedside. _Is Cagalli the only person in my life? …I don't remember anyone else._ _Hell, I don't even remember much…_ The back of his head aches. _What the hell happened to me…?_

Me.

Ego in itself seems hard to grasp.

The darkness that envelops him punctuates the suffocating trap of his mind until the sudden appearance of sunlight floods the room, illuminating everything that is around him.

A quant room with wooden walls and framed pictures of floral sketches comes into view. There is one bedside table to his left, a top is a kerosene lamp, a clock reading _9:47 A.M._ and a closed notepad with no pen. In the front is a dresser with no mirror – much to his relief.

The room's simplicity is attractively boring.

"It's always nice to let some light in," Cagalli says. Her slim silhouette is against the wide windows. Facing the window, her arms are casually crossed. "It's going to be another hot day again. I've finished making breakfast by the way."

As he sits up, his eyes drink her in. Athrun notices that her skin is a light bronze that glows underneath the sunlight, and her soft blonde hair is now let down, the ends grazing at her shoulders. Suddenly, he wishes for her to gaze back at him so he can clearly see her face. The beauty he longs to see was distorted by night's darkness from before.

How do you know she's beautiful?

Knowing comes with remembering.

"I didn't notice you come in," he mumbles.

"When you think too much you lose touch of what's happening around you."

There is a momentary silence between them. The sweeping noises of birds chirping and the mild hum of cicadas begin to drift into the silence.

"Are you talking about me, or people in general?"

"You."

Looking back at him, her plump lips curve, her full cheeks rise and the smile in her bold, brown eyes are glittering. The freshness in her face met his knowledge of her beauty.

Athrun laughs more so to himself than from her comment. _I was right._

As he thinks that, those eyes suddenly change. The glitter in them vanishes. The brown becomes heavily dulled. Like a person who has been in mourning, her eyes reveal how worn out they are from crying.

The laugh that had come from his mouth instantly dies out, like a flame being pinched by someone's fingers.

* * *

 _Your name is Athrun._

 _You are 26 years old._

 _You were in an accident not so long ago._

 _Due to this, you experience amnesia everyday._

 _This is a reminder, from you._

Those are the only words written on the first page of the notepad.

He could not count how many times he had re-read those words. The loose handwriting has imprinted itself into memory. In certain words, the black inky letters conjoin together. The last word's letters of _y,o,_ and _u_ bleed into one another.

When he had first read the message, he felt a strong sense of unreality. It was as if the unknown and empty past was attempting to creep into his present. But somehow the linkage of the past had been severed so severely that it was never a part of the present in the first place.

He could not sense his age. He could not sense any trauma that might have been inflicted on him by the accident. Whatever that accident was, it took away his past. Only his present remains, but who he is in this very moment is not for certain.

After closing the notepad and leaving it on the bedside table, he finally decides to get up from bed.

* * *

It is impossible for Athrun to refrain from curiosity. The longer he stalls, the slower time passes. He paces around the room, his mind astray. Every thought he has seemingly weaves into a different one until he eventually forgets what initially took hold of his mind. Thinking is becoming an infinite loop, erasing everything that meets the eye.

All he truly is at the moment is just a single mind in a body.

Every waking day, that mind fails at remembering who he exactly is. The notebook that could have been used as a vehicle of recording who he is has been neglected. There are no other words written in the pages of the notepad. Generally, humans are complicated beings, always in the progress of self-development. Within development, humans carry the notion of knowing themselves. Even if they are unsure of who they currently are, they are aware of who they were in the past. Athrun cannot know any of that. The notebook only gives him a fixed equation. _Accident = Amnesia._

Running his hands through his hair, he rambles aloud, "If I've had this condition for months, why haven't I written anything else to remind myself of who I am?"

No possibilities come up as his brain scrambles for answers. He would've wanted to help himself right? Instead he has left himself in the dark.

With a trembling mouth, he shuts his eyes tightly in frustration. When he opens them again, the room around him begins to look smaller, the walls appear to be closing in on him. Athrun's breath begins to heave as his temperature rises. _How come you didn't write more?_ The frustration surges in him, coming in waves. But slowly, the waves become less frequent, overtaken by a brand new current of self-pity.

 _No one deserves to lose their mind_ , he thinks.

* * *

Behind the door, reflecting back at him is a man Athrun has never seen before.

The man is in perfect stillness, except for his chest that subtly rises and falls.

If this man had been any paler, his skin would have been translucent. Colour is a rarity except for the hooded eyes that are widened in shock. A greyish green akin to mould is their colour. Although the man is shocked, his appearance indicates an inherent seriousness in him: his jaw is strong, whilst his nose is sternly angular.

They are staring each other down absorbing what is seen.

The man doesn't say anything – until Athrun does.

"I am Athrun," both of them say.

They begin to lean in, their heads coming closer to each other, until their foreheads finally meet. Athrun's touches glass, as the reflection's remains trapped on the other side.

"This is me," they both whisper.

The green in their eyes brightens slightly.


End file.
